Rise and Fall of Arela

Session 22 Recap

Understated Undercity Underdoings

The following is a faithful retelling of the events in the Undercity below Shivar. The names have been changed to protect the innocent. The events have been mis-remembered to protect the guilty.

Quint Strain’s daughter tells the party that the Shivars walls used to be magic, but they broke for some unknown reason. Its believed that the answer to the failure can be found in the Undercity but that no expedition has ever survived going down there. He is meeting with some representatives of Kharlin and Ceres in 3 days to decide the fate of the city. He plans to tell them to bugger off but can’t do that if the wall are shitty. So he tells the party to head on down to the undercity to figure out whats up with the walls. He lends his mage friend Eredris to the group for moral and magical support.

The party was lead to a hole in the ground below the city. The hole was deep, very deep, so naturally the party took a very cautious approach. Ropes were procured and measured while an order of operations was negotiated. As discussions continued Eredris mentioned that he would be float…wait…did Polycap just jump down the hole? Yes, yes that’s exactly what just happened.

Luckily, Polycarp was able to float himself safely to the bottom of the hole. Unluckily, Polycarp was not alone at the bottom of the hole. Electric shocks seemed to jump out of the darkness and slowly chipped away at the health of the noseless man. Being a quick minded individual, Polycarp lit himself a torch to see what was attacking him. Annnd, there was nothing to be seen, but the shocks still came fast and hot. Again, being a quick minded rational actor, Polycarp ran around the room aimless hoping to escape his invisible tormentors.

Meanwhile, the rest of the party was frantically climbing down the rope with the manic screams of Polycarp echoing around them. Eventually, Polycarp managed to make it back to the rope and attempted to climb away from the creatures. Polycarp coming up and the party coming down along with the now visible Wisps resulted in a bit of a vertical traffic jam. Ignomine made the dramatic decision to extricate himself via a knee shattering Superhero landing, which turned out to be unnecessary once everyone remembered that Eredris’ feather fall could have been cast on the entire party. In the end, the wisps were destroyed and Polycarp was returned to health.

The party then set themselves to the task of wandering the undercity in hopes of finding their goal, so they picked a door at random and wound their way through its narrow corridors. It didn’t take long for that search to be interrupted by two rather large rock chewing creatures that Kool-aide manned their way through the walls. Again the party’s expert planning paid off as the creatures completely ignored the carefully arranged marching order and struck right for the soft innards of the party via the soft innards of Drael. Ignomine, lacking the ability to smite these creatures, hacked like an impotent lumberjack while Polycarp peppered the creature with arrows with marginally better effect. Artas managed to distract the remaining creature from mauling Drael long enough for the various magic users to obliterate it with magic missiles. Undettered by the Cronenbergian horror of the Zorn, the party marched on.

Until they hit a dead end. But there was loot there, so thats cool. I don’t recall what loot exactly, but there was definitely loot on a dead guy. Anyway, the party moved on.

After a bit of back tracking, the party stumbled into a room and were immediately set upon by another set of Xorn. This pair, however, was craftier…Well, at least one of them was. One of them stood in the doorway and got his mouthhole stomped in, while the other one Zoidberged his ass out via chewing into the wall. The party continued with their adventuring.

Somewhere in here, there was a room with a small 1ftx1ft hole near the ceiling. The party spent some time investigating it but found nothing.

And then the fucking spiders. A whole flipping room of spiders along with some weird spider queen. Vyktor walked into the room and promptly said “NOPENOPEBLACKTENTACLES!” Artas followed close behind with “OHSHITOHSHIT!SKELTONARMS”, followed closely with “dafuq did I just do?”. Needless to say the rest of the fight did not last long as the rest of the party mopped up the stragglers. Loot was collected from the creepy queen spider lady, and the party moved on.

Again choosing a door at random, the party soldiered on with their intrepid rogue leading the way checking for tra…..and the roof is trying to smash him…ninja juke out of the ro….and the floor dropping him into pit….double ninja juke over the hole. The rest of the party, on the other side of all of the traps found themselves at a loss for how to disarm them. Luckily Artas provided clear thinking and deep insight and ripped the whole damn door off. Problem solved.

By this time the party was getting kind of ancy. They chaffed at not having a clear direction and they almost missed the corpse stuffed in a cabinet in the next room of an empty room they were strolling through. Vyktor pulled the corpse from the cabinet and found a map of the dungeon. The guy was clearly a member of a previous expedition that was less than successful, but the notes on his map gave some good direction on where not to go. Also, there were a bunch of weird notes about cats.

With the Map in hand, the party avoided the rooms labeled “GIANTWORMS”, and eventually accosted several ghouls. I think? While dispatching the ghouls the party noticed something peeping out of another weird hole near the ceiling.

Some more hallway later and the party find itself another hole. Always wanting to learn from past mistakes, they send Polycarp down first. Fortunately, Polycarp is invisible this time. At the bottom of the hole, Polycarp finds that its much nicer down there then the shit hole up above. Also, there is a weird ass metal thing with a bunch of arms floating around looking at the wall. After considering Polycarps expert rendering, the party decides that the multi-armed penis looking robot is no threat and they make their way down the hole.

In no time at all, the party finds itself locked in a room full of shelves (of crystals? I don’t remember). From the other side of the door, the robot which had vanished earlier addresses the group saying that it will only speak with or help a citizen of the Imperia. Either Drael or Polycarp (or both) attempt to bluff their way out with little concern toward the consequences. In a brief moment of clarity Artas mentions that he is or was a Knight of Sidus. The robot thing responded immediately by offering to his assistance. Unfortunately, he was unable to leave his current area unless given orders by a superior, and unfortunately he couldn’t confirm that Artas was his superior without the proper module, and unfortunately that module was lost to all but the cat (oh Bee Tee Dubs, the cat showed up), and unfortunately the cat won’t help find the module unless we help him get his blades back from a terrible awful no good very bad place. So you know, typical fetch quest chain.

The party then travelled for a few hours with the cat to collapsed “under-causeway” similar to the one found beneath that damn cottage. The only difference was that this one was a hell of a log longer and a hell of a lot more full of creepy bad stuff. An initial investigation using Vyktors newly spawned familiar/sister reveals that the blades are located 3/4 of the way down the causeway. The party begins planning its assault.

Wisp Wrasslin’ – Polycarp jumps down a hole and almost almost dies from invisible wisps in the dark.